Yes, This Pollock Has Had Some Work Done

Image: Mural, 1943. Jackson Pollock (American, 1912-1956). Oil on canvas, 247x604.5cm. Courtesy of the University of Iowa Museum of Art, Gift of Peggy Guggenheim, 1959.6. Reproduced with permission from the University of Iowa.

Few works of art are more central to the 20th-century American canon than Jackson Pollock's Mural.

Commissioned in 1943 by Peggy Guggenheim, it marked the artist's first break with representational painting, paving the way for his revolutionary "drip" technique. Yet this seminal piece, owned by the University of Iowa Museum of Art since 1951, fell into grave disrepair. So two years ago, it was shipped to the Getty Museum's lab in Los Angeles, where conservators removed an acrylic varnish that was applied during the 1970s, restoring the sharp contrasts in Pollock's vibrant pigments, and built a new stretcher for the massive 8-by-20-foot canvas. The breathtaking result will be on display at the Getty from March 11 to June 1, 2014. Catch it now, while Mural still looks as good as new.